Doomsday
Daily Sagittarius Horoscope
You are feeling the end of another year Sagittarius. Bringing up the zodiac caboose
Is not an easy task they are all seeking
your energy and vibrance to end another
year. Don't let them down.
Remember to show humility and patience
or you could end up regretting something
you said."
"They told you what?"
Emma sat back into the soft seats of Farrah's SUV and put a hand to her aching head. She'd been out with her only and best friend doing nothing at all in particular except spending small amounts of money on meeger things like marked down men's briefs when she had to excuse herself from the store because she'd received a call. Wrapping up said call had taken so long that Farrah had abandoned the department store and opted that they end their trip. The news Emma had received seemed like it was weighing her down and when Farrah fished out some of the information she had not been pleased.
"It doesn't matter I'll take care of it."
"But can they do that?"
"Are you kidding me? Insurance is a scam anyway they can do whatever the hell they want." There was obvious disgust in her voice. She grabbed the handle bar above her head and braced herself for Farrah's sharp turn onto the highway. Her mind was going out three thousand miles an hour and the bustling was a welcomed jarring every now and then to pull her so deep out of her own thoughts so quickly. Everything had been so good.
Of course it could still be. But there was really no telling at this point was there? It would all be a rather delicate card pyramid of a plot that would either be a perfect whatever it might be for however long or a catastrophe that fell apart at the seems before it even hit the sowing machine good.
Farrah was not put off. "But Emma you're pregnant. They can't just-."
She was cut off by the muffled sound of Emma's phone ringing in her bag at her feet. She fished around for it, pulling the offending machinery out and answering. "Hey baby," Trey said smoothly.
"Hey love."
"How's ya day going?"
"Good, I'm hanging out with Farrah."
"That bad influence?" Emma could hear a smirk on his lips.
So she snitched. "Trey said you're a bad influence."
"I could be, but I won't. Not right now.. I'm fucking tired.."
"See baby," he said, obviously having heard Farrah's good-natured reply. "Filthy mouth."
Emma laughed between the two of them. Trey asked her if Farrah would also be accompanying them on their trip to the doctor that day. She realized that this was his confirmation call. He was still in work mode. He was likely still at work. He would likely go on to make sure she was going to be delivering herself to either the bottom of the
At the mention Emma sighed and said she would not. She told him her appointment had been canceled. Trey waited a beat, the receiver quiet like he was waiting for her to make sense of canceling. When she offered nothing he asked her why. Emma sighed. "Because my insurance expired."
"Expired? Your health insurance?"
"Yes. The doctors office called me to see if I wanted to use a different method of payment when I came in, otherwise I had to forfeit the slot."
"So-."
"So I forfeited the slot and now I'm on a waiting list for the walk in clinic off Ponce de Leon. Have you ever heard of anything so silly, a waiting list for a walk in clinic?"
"Emma-."
"I'll talk to you about it when you get home."
"I don't-," he started, ready to throw his weight around already. But it was such a trying situation and his weight and his money could not fix the whole of it. Not entirely. This was not a fight Emma wanted to have over the phone. She had to collect herself first, figure out her next move. She could not do that with Farrah hackling in her ear and Trey charging his way belligerently through her situation with brute force and thousands of dollars.
"Trey, I will talk to you about it when you get home, ok?"
"Are you home?" he asked.
She told him she was on her way. Trey insisted after a brief pause that he would meet her there.
Emma cursed when she hung up the phone. She did not need his overbearing behind putting pressure on her already tired mind. Her hand rubbed her belly. Emma felt very much like she kept taking several steps forward to be knocked back even more than she'd gained. She wished she had a little time before Trey knew all of her problem and not just a little of it to figure out what she was going to do. But of course he was much too attentive to not attend a doctors appointment and much to professional to not call is pregnant girlfriend and make sure she'd be ready to go by the time he got home. Most of the news was fresh to her as well. She had no time, since she'd stupidly been blindly honest on the phone about the appointment, to get her groundings and formulate a plan for herself before she faced her man.
Farrah took her mind away from all that had happened in a matter of hours by entertaining her with a rendition of some Kevin Hart standup about a man and his girlfriend-discussing bedroom 'birthday specials' in front of their friends. It had been hilarious. When they pulled up to her house Emma asked Farrah if she would come back later that night. She announced that Trey was having a couple of his guy friends over for cards and they'd invited Emma since they were utilizing her spacious kitchen to do it. Emma explained that she would need a female friend and partner for spades.
"Can I bring me some weed?"
"Yeah, but you can't smoke that shit in my house."
Farrah made a face and declared that she was making no promises at all no matter how cute Trey's friends might have sounded. She hollered that she didn't like light-skinned men anyway. Emma laughed and marched up the steps. Her home was empty. Gypsy probably out securing the premises and Trey undoubtedly on his way home from H&M to demand an explanation for her canceling or allowing a doctors appointment to be cancelled just because of a little thing, to him of course, like money.
The Christmas tree was gold and purple with several light bulbs shining brightly when it was plugged in of course. Emma had apple cinnamon, pumpkin spice, and vanilla scented candle's and glade gels all about the house and it certainly smelled like the holidays. Christmas was only, after all, a few days away.
She turned on some light in the house and went upstairs to change out of her street clothes and into something more comfortable. Emma put away the few new packs of Calvin Klein underwear for her man and upped the temperature at the thermostat.
She'd just cut a pomegranate in half and was picking away at the juicy little seeds in the living room in front of the television when she saw headlights against the window even in the afternoon. She spread her towel out more carefully as to not get juice on the couch, and turned the channel to something that might grab his attention away from her.
Trey came in with his white button down open and his tie discarded. He was undoing his cuff links when he looked over at her. A quick glance around told her that he'd expected Gypsy to be home too. But the cat had his own schedule and Trey was technically early.
He greeted her with a smacking kiss to her distracted temple and sat down with a plop. "Gimme some," he demanded as a child would and Emma made him told his head back and dropped several red seeds into his mouth. He swallowed them whole after a good chew.
As soon as they were down his throat he grabbed her remote and turned the tv off. She looked at him, her mouth open and her eyebrows creased, appalled that he would just turn her tv off.
"Trey!"
"You wasn't payin' me no attention." He looked innocent like such an explanation was not an immature one and he had not ought to be ashamed of himself. But she knew better. He wanted answers. "But while I got your attention, what happened with your health insurance?"
She made a face at him. Trey waited patiently, no small smile or smirk or haughty grin. It made it easier for her to get the words and courage for to tell him the truth.
"I told you," she mumbled, more interested in her fruit. "My insurance expired."
"Delta can't expire, can it?"
"I guess so."
"Did you pay your health insurance this month?"
"Yes."
"Then-."
"Well wait, wait.. let me back up," she said, her eyebrows up and her irritation showing. She was not upset with him. She was furious, however, with her situation. It was honestly always something. "About a week ago I got a call from the doctors office informing me that my appointment was on as scheduled but there had been a hold placed on the last two payments for my last two visits. I asked why but of course they knew nothing. They said I had until Friday of last week to arrange alternate forms of payment or I would have to cancel my appointment."
"But why-."
"Lemme finish. Three days ago I started playing phone tag with this woman from the Department of Immigration. She calls, leaves a voicemail and I do the same over and over for three days, right? Finally she gets a hold of me to tell me that the immigration office discovered that I was no longer employed at H&M."
Trey sat back slowly like he knew the story must have been downhill from there. Suddenly he was not so very focused on Emma focused on pulling the white gristle of the fruit away from the sweet parts and devouring them between words.
"She said that the stipulations of my work Visa here in America dictate that I be employed at... at basically any place... or one that meets the requirements of my work Visa working at least twenty hours a week."
"Shit."
Emma nodded. "So they froze my Delta. I'm no longer considered a Visa citizen which means I'm an illegal alien."
"Shit."
"Which means I have to either find gainful employment that meets the stipulations of the type of work Visa I am here under or forfeit my property, everything that I can't make arrangements for, and leave the states in thirty days."
"Shit!"
"I remember thinking that there would be some changes after I quit my job, things I would need to do, but I forgot all about this shit."
"..."
"Think I got too comfortable... thought I was really an American."
"Oh, baby," Trey cooed while touching her back. She could hear the pity in his voice.
"I don't know why I'm acting so helpless," she muttered. "I can just get a job. I'm not afraid of work. It was your idea for me to quit my job"
"No," Trey said, his voice not as sweet as before when he'd been consoling her. "No you cannot."
She eyed him. "Why not?"
"Because I don't won't no workin' ass, grumpy ass woman that's why."
She opened her mouth and then shook her head, words failing her. Finally she asked him what the hell that even meant. Trey told her that work stressed a person no matter how menial the work was. He demanded that he would not have the mother of his child 'stressin' at no fuckin' job for some Joe.' He delicately touched the side of her face and said he loved seeing her smiling face, happy and full, every time he came in the house. He said he did not want to wait for her to return from some workplace hustle moments before he did and be fast asleep for hours after he'd gotten home while she was swelling with his kid.
She called him a 'fuckin' caveman.'
And then they sat in the silence of her nibbling at the seeds every so often.
The silence affirmed that he didn't give a shit about the fact that he very much so was a caveman.
Emma got up without a word and asked him if he was hungry. He said he wasn't and did not follow her into the kitchen. Instead he went upstairs. He had an attitude. Which he always did when he didn't get his way. But this was not the sort of situation he could win his way through. She could not be employed as his pregnant girlfriend. She was at the moment but that did not count in the eyes of the law. Emma sighed at the sink. Water in the walls told her Trey had started a shower for himself. She listened for a moment and then crossed to the doorway and down the hall to the office. Emma called Jeremiah from the house phone.
"Hello, this is Jeremiah."
"I'm being deported."
"What?"
"I'm being deported back to the Bahamas."
"Emma what are you talking-."
"Immigration found out I quit my job and now I'm being deported."
"You're serious?"
"Is there something I can do? A case I can file or something?"
"I don't know is there?"
She hated his guts. "Jeremiah, I'm serious."
"Me too."
"You're my lawyer!"
"No," he said quickly. "No, I am not. I handled a legal matter for you, received payment, and went on my way."
Her anger flared because he was right. Their ties were done. She'd only been calling for advice but he was so patronizing and prickly she wound up in an argument with him in seconds. "You are such a dick," she hissed with feeling.
"I sleep well anyway."
"Ugghh!"
"Relax, relax. Look why don't you just get a job?"
"Cause you're brothers a fucking caveman."
"Barefoot and in his kitchen hunh?" His laughter made Emma want to reach through the phone and grab his throat. "He is a caveman."
"What am I gonna do?"
"Seriously, Emma, he can't keep you from finding work."
"I know that-."
"Do you not want to go back to work?"
Emma answered honestly. "I don't mind. I-I just... me and Trey had talked about me, you know," she shuffled around. "Starting my own accounting firm. After the baby of course. And now with all this..."
"They gon' send your ass packing before you get your business off the ground."
"I don't even know why I called you. You are no help at all."
"No, no I get you. You don't wanna spend all you maternity time working at some job or another when you can be preparing to open your little business."
"Exactly! And don't call it little like that, Jeremiah you make me want to punch you in the face. Trey says I have a way with numbers."
He was not fazed. "Yeah, yeah I bet." Emma pulled her special folder from him out of a drawer in the desk, listening carefully for footsteps in the hall or the sound of water in the wall to cease. Emma fiddled with the package without opening it. Then she put it back. "Why don't you get married?"
"Oh, I hate that I called you Jeremiah I really do."
"What else do you hate?"
Trey was standing at the door. There was still water in the walls. He hadn't gotten into his shower yet. How careless of her not to have checked. But then how very 007 of her to be attempting to sneak around on the phone in her own home. In their home that smelled of pumpkin and spice at the moment.
He had divested himself of all of his clothing except his briefs. His white briefs. He looked, there in the doorway all suspicious and upset at the situation, beautifully handsome.
"I-I." She stuttered.
"Shit is that him?" Jeremiah's voice'd dropped a little. "You said my name," he said matter a fact manner next. "He caught your ass. You're dead. Tell him the truth."
"How long have you been there?"
"Are you talking to my brother?"
"Yes, how long have you been there?"
"Why you asking? You got something to hide?" he asked instead. His tone made her turn more towards him and her mind carefully pick apart what she might have said on the phone. Every little detail. She felt as though she was going into overdrive that this point. Trying to keep information from spilling out while maintaining her conversation with both Jeremiah and try and try to remember what she might have said on the phone to one of them that she didn't want the other to hear. Very tedious business indeed.
She saw almost suddenly that this was not something she would be able to joke away. His face was curious but there was a calm about it that seemed like controlled rage, like he was making sure there was cause for him to actually become upset. But he looked imposing, domineering, and almost frightening as he crowded her space. Trey stood directly in front of her and Emma gripped the receiver at her ear a little tighter and peered up at him. Would she try and tell a bold faced lie? The truth might work too though it would raise several questions she wasn't ready to answer.
He cocked his head to one side and asked her what she was talking to him about.
Emma very carefully said her current situation and offered no more information. He peered and Emma felt her face trying to calm to a guilt free nonchalant look but her shuffling feet made it easy to see that she was buckling under the pressure of some sort of deceit.
At her response his head fell back a little and he watched her carefully. He knew she was lying. Or not telling whatever made her face look so nervous. He held his hand out. Not demanding, but asking for the phone. Emma handed it over.
"What did you say to her?" he demanded almost immediately. Emma hoped against everything she had in her soul that Jeremiah was not going to be an idiot and tell Trey his suggestion. That would open a door she was just not ready to step through. Not because she didn't love him and respect him but because that would mean he would have to see and sign her prenuptial agreement. And then he would start to not trust her. But snatching the phone from his hand and telling him something along the lines of mind your business or he's just talking crazy would only raise suspicion.
Then Trey said that Emma looked like Jeremiah had said some slick shit. She bit her lip. She went to walk around him but Trey's arm wrapped around her waist and made her wait for the excruciating phone call to be over. When he hung up she braced herself for a torrent of questions as Jeremiah liked to tease but sometimes he couldn't be as vague as he thought he was.
Trey pinned her butt against the desk and looked down at her, his hands braced on either side of her hips. He stared. Emma tried a tremulous smile and decided to not say anything until he said something to get a better inkling about what he and Jeremiah had discussed.
"I wonder," he said airily. "What you hiding from me."
Her breath caught. She said nothing. Trey continued. "Every time I think I know your secrets... you got something else up your sleeve."
"I don't have anything up my sleeve."
He smiled. Then he leaned back. "You a horrible liar baby."
Trey left for his shower. When he got out he announced that he had to go and get a few things for his small card game night. Emma offered to go for him but Trey insisted that he could do it himself. He dressed in a hoodie and sweats that weren't a set but they matched well enough. He wore Nike's and a beanie. He kissed her cheek while she played some game on her iPad, mumbling that she needed to read a book or something.
She slapped around behind her but he was already out of arms length. She hollered that he needed to be back before his friends started to show up. He assured her he would.
About an hour later, closer to the evening than noon, Emma started to prepare her home for company, light spot-sweeping, dusting the mantle around the fireplace, loading the dishwasher, and turning on the lights of their Christmas tree.
She put her hair in a ponytail, a tight one on the top of the back of her head. Emma had had her fill of denim for that day so she took off her green sweater and black jeans. In the closet she found a long sleeved white v-neck top and a black maxi skirt with a modest split up one thigh. She wore only remnants of the small amount of makeup she'd put on the meet Jeremiah.
She started browning ground beef for nachos and toasting flour tortillas for quesadillas once she was sure her home and herself were presentable.
A knock at her door made her check the time. It was after six, where was Trey?
"Logan!"
He was bundled up and holding a silver suitcase that obviously housed poker chips. His five o'clock was just as thick and prettily drawn on as it had been last time. Emma hugged him once he'd stepped inside.
"How you doing?" he asked while he sat his wares down to remove his jacket. He smelled good, Emma noted when she took the coat and put it on a hanger.
She replied that she was fine, healthy. Then she told him that Trey wasn't back from running wherever he had to go. Logan made a joke about not caring where he was and offered to watch Emma finish with the finger foods while they waited for the person in question to pop up.
Chrisi showed up moments later, making a bigger deal of Trey being tardy than Logan had. He called Trey's cell phone to no avail. He hadn't answered. The three of them sat around the kitchen while Emma made grilled chicken quesadillas talking casually and comfortably. Chrisi had been in charge of beer and so the two of them drunk a couple.
By the time Farrah showed up Nino was pulling up behind her car. Emma met her friend out on the porch, ready to nag about Trey having all these people show up without him being there, then having his nerve not to answer the phone. Farrah was dressed very casually in a oversized button down shirt and leggings with leg warmers and ballerina shoes.
"Have you called him?" Farrah asked, pulling off her hoodie and showing off her longer hair that was brown at the roots and died at the tips. She'd straightened it or something because now the afro was a cute straight bob about the length of bangs all around her skull very cutely. Her dress shirt was folded into quarter sleeves and tattoos were visible on her wrists, her left upper arm, and her collar where the shirt was not buttoned.
"No but Chrisi did. He didn't answer. I hope he's ok."
"I'm sure he's ok. Meanwhile who the hell is Chrisi?"
Emma smiled. "One of Trey's little poker friends." Emma giggled mischievously and instead of taking her to the kitchen where she'd directed Nino Emma dragged Farrah to the living room and asked her if she noticed how fine Nino was, matchmaking on her mind.
Farrah made a face and admitted that he was handsome but she preferred them a little less pretty than the heir was. Emma laughed at her picky friend. "So come on. Since Trey's not here yet I wanna get these introductions out of the way so I can smoke some weed before we start."
Emma laughed and led her into the kitchen.
As it happens, Logan and her already knew each other. The tension as soon as their eyes met was so thick one could see it almost. Logan shot up from his chair and simply stood there, staring at her. Farrah shook Nino's hand and then Chrisi's distractedly.
Logan's pretty face fixed Farrah with a glare, a very blank one that must have been what stopped her from approaching him with the same outstretched hand.
"H-how do you two know one another again?" Chrisi asked, smiling at Logan when Nino reminded him that he could sit back down.
"We don't really know-."
"We used to go together."
They'd both spoke at the same time. Farrah snarled a little at him as though she didn't want the room to know that Logan considered them a couple at one point or another. Logan looked as though he dared her to deny it.
Emma looked between the two of them twice.
"Oooook-."
Nino took the opportunity to sniff the air loudly and turn to Chrisi. "You smell weed?"
Farrah, who looked more unnerved and out of her usual, calm, cool and collected element, blurted that that was her. She said she had a little on her. She never looked away from Logan.
"Oh shit," he smiled. "Smoke that shit."
Farrah flicked him a glance. "Yeah," she murmured. "Sure. Come on."
And they headed to the sunroom. Emma watched her go. Then she watched Logan's face for reactions. He was stoic, as stoic as his blush-drained face could be. Chrisi got up and touched his shoulder. "You straight, L?" he asked quietly for Emma's standing by the sink. Logan nodded distractedly. He ran a hand down his face like Trey did was Emma was being frustrating. His features look perturbed and it made Emma wonder what had been so special about his moments with Farrah that made the two of them react to each other so strangely.
Logan popped open another beer.
Emma took one to Farrah. She and Nino were not as chummy as her and Dul had been but Farrah seemed more coherent now that she had Logan had a wall or two between them. She smiled very briefly as something Nino said while she rolled up her reefer. Her nervous glance behind Emma assured her that she'd expected her friend not to be alone.
She went back inside when Farrah broke out the lighter only to hear the front door opening. Emma rushed, hoping it would be Trey. Instead she was just in time to catch Logan slapping Chrisi's hand off his arm and squaring up with him.
"I'm leaving."
"You finna let some hundred pound female run you off-."
Emma approached. "You leaving?" she asked softly up at his face. Everyone in her home besides Farrah made her feel so short right them. Her head did not clear Logan's shoulder.
He glared a little harder at Chrisi and then calmed his features to look down at her. Emma appreciated that he hadn't turned such a fierce glance at her. "Yeah, I-." he paused and looked over to Chrisi who's eyebrows were crinkled in ire. "I got somewhere I needa-."
"Don't be lyin'. If you a coward then just say-."
All at once Logan had fistfuls of his friend's hoodie and Chrisi's back was against the wall of her foyer with a loud thud. "Shut the fuck up Chrisi cause you don't know shit!" he whispered evilly. Emma's hand went over her mouth in shock and fear that they would start to brawl in her small foyer.
Chrisi did not even seem like he felt threatened. Instead his arms were causally at his sides and his face was calm. "So tell me then."
Logan let him go in disgust and turned to Emma, his face looking set to apologize for his behavior in her home. His words caught when Trey burst through the door that Chrisi had closed in Logan's face.
"Trey!" she said with relief.
His face was ascetic and closed. He did not smile at her. He did not even look at his friends. Emma went from where she was standing at the bottom of the stairs to him and stopped short when she saw Jeremiah coming up the steps looking... tired.
Emma tried to smile at him but Logan's words interrupted what she'd planned to say. "Look I gotta get outta here."
Trey glanced at him and said no words to his friends retreating form. Logan brushed past Jeremiah without words conscious of Chrisi following him calling for his friend to stop waling for just a second so that they could talk.
"Oh my goodness Trey-." Emma started.
Trey held up a thick manila folder, his eyes on her, and her words caught.
She glanced at Jeremiah who was closing the door.
"Wh-what's wrong?" she asked with dread and trepidation in her voice.
"..."
"W-where have you been? Everybody started showing up and-."
"A prenup?" His voice was steely and low like he was barely hiding his anger. Emma blinked for a long moment and that small amount of fear and trepidation grew to become full-fledged white-hot horror. She opened her mouth and had nothing. Her eyes went to Jeremiah, standing there in his wool coat and scarf.
"I'm gonna sue the breaks off your ass!" she said instead, trying to vent the anxiety she felt onto him rather than answer any questions Trey had. She stood on her tiptoes to get a better look at the lawyer's passive face, which just pissed her off more... as she was so scared. "Whatever happened to 'I did my job and I didn't tell anyone!?'"
Trey's hand on her arm made her realize she had been approaching Jeremiah. Trey thrust the folder at her. "Explain this." He uttered with finality. "Now." The last word was growled rather than spoken. Emma noticed, now that she was closer to him, that his nose was sheened with a few spots of sweat. His eyes were wide and alight and his hand was not hurting her but his grip vibrated. He was shaking.
"I-I."
"Do you not trust me?" he spit, his pretty eyes crinkling at the corners and his eyebrows screwing up.
"Yes!" she blurted. "Of course I do."
"Of course?" he held the package up for her to glance at it. "Of course?" he said again, like her answer tried his intelligence.
She looked at Jeremiah. "Just here to make sure he don't hurt somebody."
"Shut up!" Trey growled at him over his shoulder looking more frustrated at the mention of his attitude. Jeremiah threw his hands up in surrender and said no more. His head tilted back and his eyes thin like he wasn't threatened. Trey looked back at Emma. "Explain it."
Emma felt herself curling under the pressure. She sighed and pried his fingers off her arm. "Trey we have company-."
"Now, Emma." He barked without raising his voice.
She didn't know how she thought this would go for her. Emma realized she had been stupid to think he would react any other way than how he was acting right then. It had seemed like such a good idea when it happened and even now the idea seemed good but his attitude was killing her joy for her savvy-ness. She inhaled a deep breath and then exhaled. Nothing came to mind to say so she shuffled her weight in front of him.
"Do you even wanna marry me?"
Emma felt herself go cold at the question. "I could," she murmured.
"You could?" he repeated like he couldn't believe she'd said it. "You could." He said again. Emma noted the way the envelope in his hand started to distort like was crumbling. Trey's jaw jumped and he was less than six inches away from her but she did now cower under his fury no matter how much she wanted to. It would only make him more upset because she knew that he wouldn't hurt her. His power, his powerful anger was leaking off of him though and it was making her anxious.
"I ain't never seen no shit like this in my life," he growled.
"I tried to talk her out of it-."
Trey turned to his brother like he had been waiting for him to say something. "Nigga please!"
They started screaming at one another. Trey accused Jeremiah of coaxing her along and being giddy at the prospect of prying into her past. Jeremiah called him paranoid and said that his anger was stemmed form his own problems and he needed to 'get his shit together.' Emma went to put her body between the two of them. "Stop, stop stop!" She looked at Trey. "Come talk to me," she begged him in a sweet voice, a cajoling voice. "Please. I'll tell you all about it upstairs."
Trey allowed himself to be led up the stairs. Emma was surprised that Trey permitted her to intertwine her fingers with his he seemed so upset downstairs. Jeremiah hollered belligerently that he would just 'make his own damn self at home.' Emma suspected that he was going to eat her carefully prepared chicken quesadillas.
He sat on a chair Emma had poised outside the bathroom. Emma closed the double doors to the master bedroom and turned her back to it to look at him. He had opened it and was reading a few pages in. "I-I," he stopped in the silence. "I don't even know what to say about this shit..."
"..."
"..."
"I don't want you to be mad at me."
"Then explain it so I won't be cause right now it looks like-."
"I know what it looks like."
"..."
"..."
"Do you wanna marry me?"
She nodded.
He sighed like that was what he wanted to hear. "Why?"
"..."
"Emma?"
"I don't want my kid born outta wedlock..."
"..."
"I love you."
"I can't fucking tell."
"Trey-."
"What? The fuck you want me to say?" he tossed the papers on the floor viciously. "You tell somebody the only reason you would marry them is to give your kids a name. Then you get upset that they don't know if you lov-." He stopped himself. Emma could see his anger had been rising with every word. He clipped his plump lips together and calmed his face. Then he looked at her.
"That's not the only reason."
"That's the only one you said."
"But-."
"Explain it, Emma."
She sighed. "I didn't want anybody questionin' why I was with you."
"..."
"I figured if I wrote the prenup... and wrote myself out of everything you had no one, including your family, would have any basis to wonder."
"..."
"I needed Jeremiah because he knows what you have. All that you have. He was the best person to make sure I'd covered all my bases, all your assets really. So he compiled a list of things, stocks and bonds, accounts, anything that might be profitable to you and relieved me of any rights I might have to them if I was your wife and we divorced."
"..."
"...I mean, I never thought I would have a kid." She looked away from him. The realization and saying the things out loud became private for her. "Or get married."
"..."
Her eyebrows shot up. She glanced back at him and then put her head down. "Never in a million years that I might marry somebody like you..."
Someone, Farrah, knocked on the door at Emma's back. She used any excuse to see someone else for a split second, someone that wasn't grossly disappointed in her... or expecting the very worst of her right then. Someone not Trey...Emma pulled the door open. Her friend looked concerned but blazed out of her mind.
"Can I speak to you for a second?" Farrah asked softly, not nearly as domineering and friendly but demanding as she usually was. Trey was shaking his head from his seat. Emma winced and nodded. She was a hostess first. Farrah hadn't invited herself to be a thorn in his side when he wanted to shut the world out.
She murmured that she would be right back and quickly stepped outside the room. Farrah backed away from the doors a little more towards the rail beside the descending stairs. Though high as a kite her face was still holding emotions. She was embarrassed Emma realized. Her skin was not so pale as to give away her blush as Emma's was but there was still a quiver to her tight smile.
"Nino is nice..."
"Yeah, you ok?"
"Yep. You?"
Emma must have looked frazzled. She nodded nonetheless.
"Anyway ol' boy took off. Chrisi. Nino left a lil' after we came in. So I guess I should shove off too."
"..."
"I'm sorry about all this."
"Farrah what happened?"
She broke eye contact and shifted her weight. "You heard him."
"Musta parted on some horrible ass terms..." Emma was peering. Another diversion, something to keep her form the master bedroom as long as possible, seemed just the soother to her own wounds.
Farrah eyed her and then put her hands on the rail, looking far off.
"Look, call me. Ok?"
Emma nodded.
Farrah went down the stairs and on a whim Emma followed. She saw her out, the stench of bud strong on her friend, and locked the door behind her. Emma wondered to the kitchen. Jeremiah had not even bothered with a plate. He'd simply started pulling the cheesy confections off of one another one by one.
"Help yourself."
Jeremiah took her snoody remark in stride. "You betta' getcho ass back upstairs," he said in a mock warning voice like Emma was at Trey's beck and call. Her arms crossed and her eyes thinned and she stared daggers at him until she retreated. His sneering smile, like she was needed and nothing she might have said as a rebuttal would have relieve her of that title, haggled her.
She opened her bedroom door and was surprised to find Trey right where he'd been when she left. She closed the door behind her.
"Trey I swear I never meant to hurt you," she breathed, going to her knees in her split maxi skirt before him. She grabbed his hand with both of hers. "I only wanted to secure everything for our child that they deserved in case-."
"In case we divorce." He gestured to the papers on the ground. "That shit make it seem like you expect it. Like the marriage can't go any other way."
"I don't feel like that. I just don't want you to be trapped with me and then my expenses after me-."
"After you? That's what I'm talking 'bout!" He stood up and paced away from her. "What the fuck do that shit even mean?"
"Nothing!" She stood and followed him further into the spacious room. "It's a precaution!"
"Not for you! Emma that thing is a death trap for you."
"Only if I expect something from you which I don't!"
He threw up his hands and turned his back to her. Trey wiped his face. His brooding figure paced around for a few moments in slow deliberate steps like he was coming to conclusions after thinking on them very carefully. She moved to the bed, passing his back closely and sliding onto the high mattress.
Emma sat patiently. She figured now was the perfect time to be absolutely quiet unless spoken to. He seemed like a bomb, ready to explode with accusations and distrusting words.
He finally turned his body in her direction but trained his eyes on the ground. "And now this shit with your visa forces everybody's hand..."
"We don't have to do it like that-."
"So who really gives a fuck what I really want out of this shit anyway?" He asked bitterly still talking to himself. "Everybody else plottin' and shit and here my dumb ass is, lookin' fuckin' stupid."
"You're not stupid!" She jumped up paddled over to him in determined strides like she'd suddenly found backbone in whatever his words were. "Don't think that anyone's forcing you to do anything. My..." she didn't want to say the word again. Emma was afraid of the look that would creep over his handsome features at the mere mention of it. "That is just a safety net. We could always-."
"Say it again and I'll never marry you." Trey spoke the words, not bothering to look at her, vehemently and on a gently whisper. His eyebrows were raised and his shoulders were tossed back.
She sighed again and sat back at his feet, her forehead touching his knee while she tried to think. Trey held the weight of her skull, still so as to help her keep her balance, while he picked his own brain.
"There won't be a divorce. Ever." He looked down at her. Emma scooted closer cause most of the venom in his face was gone and now he just looked tight like his word was his bond right then. "If I give you my name..." Trey shook his head and turned away.
Emma came up off her feet where she'd been sitting and went fully to her knees to be his height while he sat. She touched the side of his face with the back of her hand. She was embarrassing him. He was not comfortable discussing whatever he had been poised to say so surely and with such force. She, of course, would not make him say it. Emma wrapped her arms around his torso in the chair and she leaned over his lap. She nuzzled the underside of his chin and ear. She pressed her forehead to the side of his face and felt him hold the weight. He was not breathing erratically. His heartbeat was slow and soothing.
"If I give you my name we will not get a divorce. Ever."
"..."
"..."
"Do you wanna marry me?"
He nodded and Emma was giddy with relief and love and good vibes. She pulled away abruptly when she realized she hadn't rewarded him with that same feeling, that same elation at being wanted and craved for life by someone. Emma had virtually belittled what could have been or was supposed to be his moment. Not on purpose of course but she'd still done it.
"And I'm not signing that piece of shi-."
She leaned in and smooshed her lips to his cheek and then his jaw and then the corner of his mouth and then his lips. Emma grabbed one of his hands on both of hers.
He grunted a response, lost in his thoughts.
"Trey," she called.
"I think," she muttered. "I think I love you so much... I'm so afraid to lose you, that I'd agree to anything on paper..."
"..."
"... just so that I would have the right amo to beg you to stay. You've been taken advantage of before. I was just being safe..."
And there it was. The reason she was so very defensive. What would she really do without Trey after all that they'd been through together? Fat with his child and somehow not in his presence? The lifestyle he was trying to encourage her to live and see as only what she deserved when she'd run away from such a lavish set up before had fast become the norm. A set up that did not include Trey seemed, with its yachts and such extravagancies, shabby at the very least now.
"Jeremiah put you up to it didn't he?" Trey jumped at the idea to not believe the worst in her; that she would reduce herself to nothing, basically the broke ass assistant that she'd been when they met should their union take a turn for the worst. That she would not be cared for in any way and that while her home would always be hers as previously (before she'd become an illegal alien) sanctioned by the state of Georgia, all his money, luxury, and finery would go with him.
Emma stopped him. "No, no don't put that on him. It was all my idea."
"Still finna make that nigga get the fuck out."
She smirked.
He looked displeased once again. She kissed him, a peck, quickly. "You smell good."
"Thank you."
"I love you."
"Love you too baby." He finally stopped resting on his left hand and sat up, offering her a full frontal view of his beautiful face and not just a profile. He sighed and kissed her forehead while his arms circled tighter around her back. Emma pressed her front to his and relished in his good graces and how wonderful it felt to be coveted by him. Her eyes slipped closed and her head ducked. Trey slipped his arms up her back while Emma sat perched between his legs. He pushed her hair away with one of his hands and kissed her hairline. She exhaled.
"..."
"Just don't know what the fuck I'ma do with your ass sometimes." He'd said it more to himself than to her so she didn't sat anything back.